


Ashes in the snow

by paceisthetrick



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paceisthetrick/pseuds/paceisthetrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a fic_promptly promt of the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes in the snow

**Author's Note:**

> If you'vre read the book, you know this scene. If you haven't, you need to! This is a defining aspect of Peter's relationship with Roman. Like Romeo and Juliet, he has to overcome a lot of fear to trust the vampire, something I think the series fails to show.

He knew of the upirim from an early age. His grandfather whispered tales of shadows and fear. Once, when his grandfather’s grandfather lived, it had been the task of their kind to protect the caravans. That was what made them special among their people. They alone could keep the evil ones at bay.

It was when he was ten that he first met them. He walked the snow in the forest and saw them – black reeds in the white – naked and laughing drunkenly in the frigid air.

“Un loup-garou!” hissed one woman triumphantly and three sets of piercing green eyes trained on him.

“Viens ici, viens, mon petit ami, mon petit loup!” the single male croaked.

To this day, Peter is uncertain what made him comply. He walked to them, shaking violently. He could smell his own fear. He’d wet himself.

The woman who had identified him picked him up like a ragdoll in her strong arms and kissed his cheek. She reeked of death, of the blood of others.

“Tu sais,” she kissed his cheek repeatedly, running her tongue up and down and his hot flesh, “J’ai un beau cadeau pour toi!” And the second woman, the older one, flung her head back and screeched.

She took a piece of cheese from a platter and dipped it in the wine, stopping to press it to Peter’s lips before carrying him to the railing where he saw his present.

It was a fox, dangling by a snare. Its leg was broken and its coat was thin and dull from starvation. It looked at Peter, bright shining eyes. _Help me, brother!_ its eyes said.

The vampire leaned over to let the poor creature smell the sharp cheese and then dropped it to the ground where it joined a large assembly of such tasty tidbits, still fresh in their frozen state.

Oh, he longed to help! He wanted to reach out and free it and run away with it! Nurture it back to health. He wanted to reach out and break its neck! End its torment.

With one surge of strength he pushed away from the woman and jumping over the bannister fled into the white forest.

She shrieked after him, every filthy word in her rotten vocabulary. The others laughed and laughed but no one pursued him.

Vampires don’t eat wolves. They still respect the pack’s vengeance.

For days he lay in bed and cried and cried and the nightmares never did cease. The fox came back to him in his worst moods, his weakest states, and looked sorrowfully at him as if to ask, _How could you fail me so? Are we not brothers? Bonded by blood?_

He saw the figure on the wall, carelessly smoking in the graceful easy way of his kind. The piercing green eyes trained on him but only with a nobleman’s partial interest in a new unclean face in his midst. He did not recognize him for the wolf he was.

But Peter knew. He would watch carefully the upir named Roman Godfrey.


End file.
